Venus has always been my guilty secret. I've got Venus in Scorpio.
As a beginning astrologer I learned this meant I had an intense,
seductive, and smoldering femininity. I wouldn't mind claiming this
energy at all. I'd even make do with its shadow reputation as a vengeful
sorceress. Yet the usual observations about Venus in Scorpio have
never rung true for me. This is my unconscious planet. Years ago,
my husband left me for a woman who probably was a Venus in Scorpio.
She was dark, mysterious, and passionately sexual, "Everything," he
said, "you're not."

My chart tells the story of my planet's dispossession. Venus falls
in the 3rd house of siblings: My sister got the Venus in the family.
She was my father's favorite. With long dark hair and almond eyes,
she could ride bikes, roller skate, and gallop on a horse with ease.
I was clumsy, wore glasses, and had short mousy brown hair, with
nothing seductive about me. I always felt invisibly thwarted attempting
Venus things. That's Pluto squaring Venus from my 12th house. Were
Pluto in another house, I might be more intense, impassioned and
perhaps obsessive, as this Pluto square is sometimes described. But
mostly I've experienced this aspect as a deep inadequacy, even fear
around men. My Venus is further squared by the Moon, a common signature
for female rivalry. Typically this describes a mother-daughter competition,
with the mother subtly undercutting the femininity of her rival daughter.
Perhaps it was because of that other triangle in our family that
my mother undercut my girly-ness by making me her favorite, with
an ambiguous gender message. She praised me often for my brains and
strength of character, but never for my beauty.

Quite early, at age four or five perhaps, I gave up on being a girl.
With Venus conjunct brainy Mercury, I've always gone for an androgynous,
bookish style. Whatever passions I'm due from the Scorpio vibration,
I've sublimated into 3rd house pursuits, as an ardent love for the
beauty of language, a zeal for learning, a desire to probe the depths
of thought. I was quite relieved during my pregnancy to learn I was
having a son. Feeling so helpless around pink bows and lace, I was
terrified of having a daughter. How would I dress her? How would I
comb her hair? What could I possibly teach her?

Being so absorbed in my own discomforts with Venus, it was some
time before I lifted my head and discovered that many of you don't
have such a good relationship with her either. We've got different
stories indicating different dispossessions. But if we judge the
health of the cultural Venus by the questions people ask astrologers,
it's easy to conclude she is but scarcely held. After issues of purpose
("Who am I really?" and "What should I do with my
life?), most people want to know how to get more Venus things. They
want more love, more money, more happiness, They want to be more
attractive and feel appreciated by those they love. Cultural epidemics
of low self esteem, marriages without passion, and work without joy
are further proof of how much we lack and crave her.

So
who is Venus really? She's more than sheer femininity. She presides
over many of life's good things. Sure, she's the happy, flawless
girls in beer commercials. But she's also a sensuous drip of chocolate,
a lusty, carefree laugh. She's a string of diamonds, a deliciously
lazy afternoon. If you want to raise your inner Venus, just dance
your fingers across a silk sheet, or sniff the fine leather of a
luxury car. Venus is wicked too, orgasmic, fun. She's also graceful
and artistic. She's Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Onassis. She's the
sensuality and fertility of earth in her Taurus emanation. She's
sweet harmony and judicious balance in her aesthetic, airy Libra
nature. You can locate her in an elegant mathematical equation. You
can hear her singing through a wind chime or the morning chorus of
birds. Drop an ice cube down your back and she'll squeal with delight.
She's both poise and eroticism, wild abandon and good taste. As the
goddess of love and abundance, she's what makes this earth so pleasurable.
So why on earth should we have trouble with her at all?

The Venus of today is hopelessly frustrated. Our most enduring
pop Venus icon, Marilyn Monroe, is known at once for two qualities:
her allure and her unhappiness. She's not alone. Consider Elizabeth
Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Di, other late twentieth century
Venus icons. Each had so much, yet was poignantly unsatisfied. What
they possessed in money, status, and beauty, they seemed to lack
in true love or personal happiness. Or so our myths about them go.
Their stories confirm our modern expectations—of dashed hopes
and great beauty yoked to personal tragedy. Our romantic fantasies
often glorify unhappiness—the ache of longing, the sweet sorrow
of parting. It's true—not having something, can flush its best
qualities to the surface. Yet how often, when we our desires are
fulfilled, do we become complacent or critical, fully neglecting
our joy? We may yearn after our romantic partners and make gods of
them, so that they may (sigh) make up for all our life might lack.
When they fall to earth with feet of clay, we go hunting for another
fantasy. The essential poverty of this approach is the continual
emptiness that inspires it. When we need someone or something to
complete us, we have sent our Venus into the streets carrying a begging
bowl.

It
is no wonder that so many people go to astrologers hoping for some
happy Venus news. Astrologers study Venus in a chart for clues about
people's relationships and finances. Love and money represent our
ideas of happiness. But are they Hers? What if the Venus placement
actually suggests where we're meant to serve Her interests, rather
than the other way around? In ancient times, if someone's life was
going badly, the oracle's job was to identify which god or goddess
had been offended and which offering would set things right. Most
astrology books will tell me that Venus in Scorpio means I'm jealous
and full of lust. But wouldn't it be more interesting if they revealed
what Venus in Scorpio wants from me—if they said not what I
am like, but rather what I need to do? Until then my potential for
pleasure may remain a sleeping beauty in a thorned forest. Can astrology
bring the magic kiss that will wake my Venus up? Who is Venus really?
And what matters to her?

The Greeks knew her as Aphrodite. Their goddess is not a brilliant
strategist like Athene, nor an able huntress like Artemis. She travels
with men, but not as a competitor. Radiantly beautiful and exquisitely
graceful, she is an irresistible femme, skilled in countless arts
of attraction. She knows how to please—and is delighted to
be pleased. The smith-god Hephaestos married her, but she's linked
romantically with a host of others, including the gods Ares, Dionysus
and Hermes, as well as mortals Adonis and Anchises. There are even
incestuous whispers about Zeus, her earth-aspect father. Among her
many sons are the hero Aeneas, Priapus with his huge phallus, and
Hermaphroditus with both male and female genitalia. Unabashed sexuality
surrounds her. Of course her most famous son is Eros, that cherub
of desire with devastating arrows. There are varied stories about
her birth, but the most famous is that she rose up, fully formed,
from the sea foam of Ouranos' severed genitals Temples were built
to her and priestesses honored her with sexual arts. Often she's
pictured standing naked on a giant sea shell (symbol of the vulva).

Aphrodite's connection to both male and female genitalia is so
pronounced, we must consider this key to understanding her values.
Yet how do we draw that into our astrology charts? And how do we
reconcile her unabashed sexuality with our twenty-first century feminist
values? We've fought hard to take women beyond being sexual objects.
We must further acknowledge the stain that two thousand years of
Christianity has spilled on Aphrodite's unabashed erotic free-for-all.
Most of us discover our erotic feelings in youth, alone and in secret.
Not being able to share them with anyone forever taints our sexuality
with a certain uneasiness and shame. We're constantly taught about
the methods and virtues of work, but little is ever said about the
skills and importance of pleasure. Nor can we take much comfort from
the Middle Age legacy of courtly love. Despite being an affliction
of a few privileged knights and troubadours, this chaste and idealistic
style of loving has profoundly shaped—and distorted—our
contemporary notions of romance. Pass sexy Aphrodite through all
these filters and she comes out rather strained—which may be
why, unlike the Greeks, we've built no honest temple to her. Of course
such neglect is the sort of thing to make a goddess mad.

In
fact, psychologist James Hillman thinks Aphrodite is quite angry.
This goddess of sexuality expects us to recognize that sex is a sacred
and soulful force. She wants us to ignite with her divine spark,
to become instruments of pleasure. She wants us to obliterate boredom
and fatigue with heavenly joy, to taste, touch, and smell our rich
and beautiful world. She wants us to know that ecstatic communion
with life force during sacred sex will make us feel healed and whole.
Then our lives and all that we encounter will be blessed with Aphroditic
laughter, sparkle and grace. But when we minimize her gift, when
we secularize it, sneak it, shun it, and feel guilty about it, we
have deeply dishonored her powers. A goddess scorned is a goddess
out for revenge, and Venus does this, says Hillman through a “pink
madness.” Says Venus, I shall invade every nook of the contemporary
world that has refused me so long with a pink madness. I shall pornographize
your cars and food, your ads and vacations, your books and films,
your schools and your families. I'll get into your T-shirts and underwear,
even into your diapers, into teenie boppers, their slogans and songs,
and into the old ladies and gents in retirement colonies, on walkers
in San Diego and Miami Beach. I'll show you by showing, until your
minds are fuzzed pink with romantic desires, with longings to getaway—trysts,
nests, sweets. That is, the civilization will be crazed to get into
my preserve, my secret garden. I will excite your entire culture
so that even those attempting to cure their neuroses, as well as
their sober psychoanalysts, will have nothing better to talk about
than desire, jouissance, seductions, incest, molestations and the
gaze into the mirror. [1]

With her abundant sexual encounters, Venus names our capacity to
be promiscuous with all of life, to enjoy it, surrender to it, play
with it, and create from it. When the Sun is creative, it wants to
express itself and be acknowledged. Venus, however, creates just
for the thrill of it. When Venus is engaged, our creativity is erotic.
Her absence, therefore, may be why some creative projects fail, burdened
with too much “purpose” and expectation. Venus reminds
us that having fun is high art. And it's a deep value of the cosmos.
Without the Sun there would be no life, but without Aphrodite's desire,
represented by the embrace of gravity and the fertile, receptive
body of earth, there would be no garden here, no creation, no beauty.
That our earthly paradise should exist at all is quite remarkable.
None of it is necessary. In a sense, it's all frills. But what frills!
If we don't take pleasure in these daily frills of our existence,
then we truly miss Venus/Aphrodite's point.

Dana Gerhardt

Having Venus in a chart, therefore, implies certain obligations.
Whether she's in your 4th house of family and home, your 11th of
friends, your 9th house of philosophy, wherever she appears, you
need to answer her questions. Do you make this part of your life
beautiful? Do you offer time for sensuous experiences here? Do you
allow yourself to open and surrender? Do you laugh, do you appreciate,
and are you playful, so that everyone around you is inspired by your
joy? Venus' sign suggests how to decorate her temple, filling it
with things that most comfort, honor, and please you. Read her aspects
to other planets as stories of her escapades, where she was most
delighted or perhaps challenged and even overcome. Let learning about
your Venus be an act of pleasure, not a chore. Start with whatever
happiness you find in her house and sign and build from that. Everyone
has some joy, no matter how bleak their landscape. I'm reminded of
a story a professor once told. He was walking through a cafeteria
line with a suicidal colleague, when this man interrupted his depressed
and misery-filled narration to instruct the server about a baked
potato. Carefully he chose the one he wanted and all the extra treats
to put on top of it. That was a moment, no matter how small, when
Venus was alive, when desire overcame death.

Venus demands that we embrace our own delight. But given the cultural
suppression of Venus, this isn't always easy. The Louvre's famous—and
armless—statue of Venus de Milo names our psychic condition
with cunning accuracy. A Venus without arms lacks the capacity for
sensuous engagement with the world. She's incapable of the very embrace
that defines her, wanting with eyes, mind and heart, but unable to
have and hold. More instructive is Boticelli's La Primavera. In this
painting Venus raises one hand in approval of the scene around her.
She is Venus the appreciator, the aesthetic one. With her other hand
she holds her robes, a gesture of self-possession. Also inspiring
is Boticelli's The Birth of Venus. Unlike the lovers on Keats' urn,
forever reaching out, into the future, here Venus stands naked on
her giant shell, fully centered in the moment, embracing her pleasure-body,
queenly in her joy.

Those
of us who don't come by this expression naturally need good Venus
role models. I've been lucky to have three friends with Venus in
the Gauquelin sectors [2] of their charts. One
has Venus conjunct her Ascendant. Her situation is a striking echo
of Aphrodite's story: She has a Hephaestos-like artisan husband who
adorns her with his hand-made jewelry, and there's another man with
whom she's having a passionate affair. Jill is an incurable flirt.
When she's just outdone a rival, she makes a very convincing Venusian
gesture of a proud and contented cat licking its paw. I once quizzed
her about her flirting, an activity that's always confused me. She
felt her secret was her laugh. "Men," she said, "know
exactly what I mean when I laugh." Among the Greeks, Aphrodite
was known as the ”laughter-loving” goddess. Laughter
is Aphrodite's means to put us at ease. And it can send a signal—that
we know a thing or two about having fun.

My second friend has Venus conjunct the Midheaven. Carol has enjoyed
good career success, having risen to a position of authority with
a nice salary, despite just a high school education and being so
much younger her peers. In the office, she's often the center of
attention. And she's beautiful, knows exactly how to line and shade
her eyes, and in a world that glorifies the anorectic female, is
unashamed of the voluptuous curves inside her skin-tight jeans. She
can be both bawdy and proper. At formal (Midheaven) occasions, she's
quite keen on observing correct social forms. At her bridal shower,
I watched how with remarkable grace and skill she transformed the
modest livingroom gathering into the most important and elegant event
in the world (it was to her). From Carol I've learned how Aphrodite's
confidence and commitment to beauty makes the rest of us enjoy it
too.

My third friend has Venus conjunct her Descendant, in its own house,
a place of honor. Andrea is tall and elegant. She wears pearls so
naturally they look appropriate even in the laundromat. She has an
almost obsessive passion for fine sheets. Early in life she wanted
to be an artist, but contented herself with marrying one. I once
asked her how she dealt with the attentions of men she wasn't interested
in, something that's always made me co-dependently apologetic. I
suspected that kind of thing had happened to her a lot. She thought
for a moment, then instinctively went into her 7th house for the
answer. "I always try to put myself in their position, and then
tell them in a way that I would like to hear." "But what
if they don't get it?" I asked. "Then the kindest thing
is to say it gently but very direct." It was the voice of Aphrodite,
sweet but self-possessed.

I've seen moments where each of these women went beyond mere mortal
feminine skill. However, if I were to put my finger on the one feature
that binds all three, it's this: I was incredibly disappointed when
I finally met their men. There was nothing wrong with their fellows.
It's just the way each woman had always talked about her lover, I
expected someone no less than a god. Despite being with her mate
for some time, each still speaks of her man with heavenly sighs and
gauzy eyes, in that gushy way the rest of us reserve for our partners
during the first three months. But their adoration is neither the
fantasy of early romance nor a woman's subservience. All three are
strong women and clearly aware of their lover's humanity. Yet they
still see someone who delights them. And that is Aphrodite's deepest
secret: She knows how to keep herself delighted in love.

We might wonder therefore about Aphrodite's legendary promiscuity.
What does promiscuity imply? Those who are promiscuous never settle
into a relationship; therefore, each liaison has the excitement and
curiosity of something new. At some point in our partnering, most
of us trade Venus for the more demanding presence of our Moon. We
want security, we have needs, we have a sense of the past. Losing
spontaneity, we read deeper meanings into every action. If the Moon's
partner forgets a request, the Moon is sure he or she just doesn't
care. Slipping into old patterns, the Moon wonders whether her mate
will ever make her happy. But self-possessed Venus sees disappointments
otherwise, not as a reflection of her worthlessness, but as chance
to discover more about her other. She may even be amused—tickled
at the intensity that makes her lover absent-minded, delighted with
his journal carried everywhere, crammed full of notes, because her
lover, enthusiastic as a child, can't remember anything unless it's
written down. It might even be what makes her mate more dear.

Venus
as courtesan delights herself by being delighted. She loves to love
whatever she sees. There's something thrilling about this kind of
promiscuity. It's a willingness to be surprised. And it's a willingness
to be insecure, not knowing where it all will lead. This kind of
Eros is something we can take anywhere—Into our marriages,
our careers, even our relationships with children and friends, into
each encounter with our world. This erotic engagement is well described
well by the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, [3] who
suggests we should move through life with an expectant wonder, wondering,
for example, when you flush a toilet if the water will swirl down
or up, and how delightful when it swirls down. Can you imagine how
interesting dinner will taste tonight if you don't know what to expect
from your pasta? Can you imagine how delightful your child's presence
will be if you're constantly unsure of who he or she is becoming?
Perceived with fresh eyes and open heart, anything might be beautiful
or fascinating, anything might inspire your love.

Not all of Venus' stories are happy ones. After all, it was she
who started the Trojan War. And there was that time her husband Hephaestos,
suspecting infidelity, trapped her in a net lying naked with Ares,
caught for all Mt. Olympus to ogle and laugh. The lesson here is
clear: When you act from your Venus nature, you might just expose
yourself. With Venus you name your values, which will reveal and
may entrap you. She is the goddess of choices. And choices bring
consequences. So there may always be a price to pay for her. You
can play it “cool” but then your passion will disappear.
Venus says “Get hot.” You may get into trouble. Maybe
you'll start a war. Life won't be quite as safe. But then, without
your Venus, would it really be much of a life?

Michel Gauquelin is a French
statistician and astrologer who demonstrated the strength of planets
within ten degrees on either side of the angles.

Pema Chodron, Awakening Compassion, (Sounds True
Audio, 1995)

MOONPRINTS by
Dana Gerhardt

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